“Go back to the fucking table,” Kara said, her fingers digging into my stomach. “Go.”

  I held the motherfucker’s gaze until he laughed and turned, making his way back through the crowd.

  “What the fuck was that?” I asked Kara as she shoved at me.

  “Nothing,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. She still looked freaked the fuck out, even with me standing right in front of her.

  “It sure as hell wasn’t nothin’,” I shot back as she moved around me, hurrying toward our group. I clenched my jaw and followed her, instead of yelling her name like I wanted to.

  By the time I reached the table, Kara had convinced Charlie that it was time to go and they were grabbing their stuff.

  “You guys out of here?” Leo asked in surprise. “Thought you’d make it longer than us old folks.”

  “Looks like they’re ready to go,” I replied through my teeth. Something was seriously wrong, and if Kara thought I was going to let it go, she was in for a rude awakening.

  “Everythin’ alright?” Mack asked me, getting up from his spot next to Rose.

  “Guess Kara wants to leave,” I replied, watching her get drunken hugs from all the women.

  “Thought she was havin’ a good time,” Mack said curiously. “First time she’s ever wanted to go out with us.”

  “What?” I asked, turning to look at him.

  “Yep.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t happen often, but we always invite the girls when we go out. Charlie usually shows at some point, but Kara never has.”

  “Never?”

  “Think this is her first time in a bar,” he said seriously, watching his daughter. He looked over at me. “That’s weird, right? Kids still go out and party with their friends, it’s not uncool or some shit?”

  “You’re askin’ the wrong person,” I replied. “Haven’t exactly been partyin’ for the last few years.”

  He nodded in acknowledgement as Kara and Charlie reached us.

  “We’re heading out,” Kara said to her dad, giving him a half-hug as she held on to Charlie’s drunk ass. “I’m sure we’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “My parents’ house burned to the fuckin’ ground,” Charlie said to me, fisting her hands up by her face and then spreading her fingers wide. “Poof! Gone.”

  “Yeah,” I said, pulling her away from Kara to help Charlie walk toward the entrance. If Charlie went down, I wasn’t sure what Kara thought she’d be able to do about it. They’d both end up on the dirty floor.

  I kept one eye on Kara as we made our way through the crowd, and I was so focused on her that I almost didn’t catch Charlie as she lurched away from me.

  “I know you,” she said, pointing at a table. “I know all of you.”

  The table laughed.

  “Don’t laugh,” she said, sounding surprisingly sober for a moment. “You’re all a bunch of little prick douche canoes.”

  “Shut up, Charlie,” Kara said, pushing us toward the door.

  “Fucking creeps,” Charlie yelled over her shoulder. “You peaked in high school, dickheads, and that’s not saying much!”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw one guy rise from the table, but his friends forced him back into his seat.

  “Yeah, sit back down,” Charlie yelled just as my gramps came up behind us. “I’ll beat your ass again, just like when we were in school!”

  “Jesus,” Gramps spat. He stepped around me and bent at the waist, throwing Charlie over his shoulder—a move I’d seen him pull on my Gram a hundred times. “I’m gettin’ too old for this shit.”

  We followed him out of the bar as Charlie struggled to straighten up long enough to yell more insults at the table.

  “Knock it off,” Gramps said, giving her a shake.

  “Those assholes,” Charlie bitched. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I should’ve just started swinging.”

  Kara was suspiciously silent.

  “You want me to fight with those young fuckers?” Gramps asked easily, setting her on her feet. “You start that fight and I’m gonna have to end it.”

  “You could take them,” Charlie replied, scowling back at the bar.

  A couple of people standing outside to smoke were laughing.

  “You got it from here?” Gramps asked me, shaking his head.

  “Yeah, I’ll get ’em home,” I replied.

  He walked back into the bar as I ushered Kara and Charlie to the Jeep. I didn’t even laugh when Charlie bumped her head trying to climb inside, even though it was funny as hell. All my attention was on Kara, who had gone completely silent.

  She was like a ghost as she quietly climbed into the front seat, gently closing the door behind her. I rounded the hood as she buckled herself in. As soon as I’d gotten into my seat, she locked the doors.

  “Those motherfuckers,” Charlie was mumbling, leaning forward to wrap her arms around Kara from behind. “I’ll kill ’em.”

  “Drop it, Charles,” Kara ordered softly.

  “Fuck that,” Charlie said as we drove toward the apartments.

  And as luck would have it, halfway there, lights lit up behind me. I was being pulled over.

  I tried to control my breathing as I pulled over and reached for my wallet to get my driver’s license.

  “You got insurance and registration?” I asked Kara as she rummaged through the glove compartment.

  “Here,” she said nervously, handing them over.

  “Keep your mouth shut, Charlie,” I ordered as I rolled down my window.

  “License and registration,” a voice in the darkness ordered. I couldn’t see his face because of the flashlight he was pointing at mine.

  “Here you go,” I said, handing them over before putting both hands on the wheel. I wasn’t about to give him any reason to hassle me.

  “You been drinking tonight?”

  “No, sir,” I said.

  “You came from a bar,” he replied.

  “I’m the designated driver,” I replied. “I only had one beer.”

  “So you have been drinking.”

  “Just a beer—”

  “Step out of the vehicle, please.”

  I took a second to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth.

  “I need to unbuckle my seatbelt,” I told him.

  “Go ahead.”

  As I unbuckled my seatbelt, his flashlight moved through the car, pausing on Kara before sweeping over Charlie in the back seat.

  He stepped back as I opened the door, and as soon as I was outside, I saw who the cop was. Officer Asshole. Just my fucking luck.

  I didn’t even ask why he’d pulled me over. I wasn’t about to rile him when even the slightest bullshit could fuck with my parole.

  “Move to the front of the vehicle,” he ordered.

  My entire body burned with humiliation as I followed directions, doing a field sobriety test, even though I’d only had half a beer. I could feel Kara and Charlie’s eyes on me as I did what I was told like a fucking puppet.

  “You’re free to go,” Officer Dickhead said, handing me my license and Kara’s paperwork.

  “Thanks,” I said, the words nearly choking me.

  I got back into the Jeep and buckled myself in, waiting for him to leave. When he didn’t, I started the Jeep and pulled back onto the road.

  “What the fuck was that?” Charlie asked.

  “Not now,” I ordered, glancing in the rearview mirror.

  He followed us until we pulled into the apartment complex.

  “Why the hell did he pull us over?” Charlie asked as we parked.

  “He didn’t say,” I replied, climbing out of the Jeep.

  “Well, why didn’t you ask?” Charlie sputtered. “He can’t just—”

  “He can do whatever the fuck he wants,” I said, cutting her off. “And there wasn’t shit I could do about it. I’m on parole, Charlie.”

  “You still have rights,” she argued as we walked toward their door. “The fucking constitution—”

  “Just stop, Charlie,” Kara ordered, her voice wobbling. “Jesus, just stop.”

  Charlie’s mouth snapped shut as I unlocked the front door and opened it wide so they could go inside.

  “It’s been a long day,” Kara said as I walked in behind them. She barely looked at me. “I’m just going to go to bed.”

  “You kickin’ me out?” I asked in disbelief. “You want me to go?”

  “Of fucking course she is,” Charlie snapped, throwing her hands in the air. She stomped back to her bedroom.

  “Kara?”

  “This is moving really fast,” she sidestepped, still not looking at me. “Maybe we should just—”

  “You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me,” I ground out, reaching up to press at the headache forming between my eyes. Adrenalin was still racing through my veins, making my skin feel tight after that shit at the bar and then the run-in with the cop. I didn’t have the patience to deal with Kara’s bullshit, too.

  I just wanted to fuck and fall asleep with her wrapped around me and process it all in the morning. If that made me an asshole, I guess I was an asshole.

  “It’s been a long night,” Kara replied.

  “Yeah, you said that,” I said. “Any reason why we can’t end it together?”

  “I just think we should maybe take a little break—” she said, pausing when I scoffed. “Just a short break. Really short. Just—”

  “You just think if I leave tonight,” I said, the adrenalin turning into anger in a heartbeat, “that tomorrow when you let me back in there, I’ll be so happy about it, I won’t ask you what that shit in the bar was all about.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. She smoothed her hand over the back of the couch. “That’s not—no.”

  “Then why don’t you tell me now?” I asked. “Who was that guy?”

  “Just some kid from school,” she said, trying to play it off.

  “Old friend?” I asked sarcastically.

  Her eyes met mine.

  “No?”

  “He’s just an asshole we went to school with,” she said through her teeth.

  “Seemed like a bit more than that,” I replied. I wanted to pace, to move and get some of the energy out, but she’d stopped me near the door and there was nowhere to go.

  “It wasn’t,” she replied stubbornly.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, just tell him,” Charlie yelled from her bedroom.

  “Fuck this,” I said, shaking my head. “You tell me why you were fuckin’ shakin’ and white as a ghost, or I’m outta here.”

  Kara just stared at me. Her silence was like a punch to the gut.

  Instead of heading toward the door, I strode past her down the hallway. Charlie met me at her bedroom door.

  “Tell me,” I ordered.

  Charlie glanced around me at Kara in indecision. Then, probably because she was drunk, answered me.

  “I caught those guys—”

  “Shut the fuck up, Charles,” Kara yelled.

  “They had Kara cornered,” Charlie said quietly. “You know that little nook by the locker rooms?”

  I nodded, nausea pooling in my gut.

  “They caught her on her way out—”

  “Charlie,” Kara snapped.

  “Her hair was still wet,” Charlie said, swallowing hard. “They weren’t doing anything. They just, you know, were crowded around her. They wouldn’t let her leave and—”

  “If you say another fucking word—” Kara screeched from behind me.

  “They were saying a bunch of shit,” Charlie said, ignoring Kara as she straightened her shoulders. “Sexual shit. All the stuff they wanted to do with her.”

  For a second, my sight darkened at the edges, rage like I’d only felt once before tightening every single muscle in my body.

  “I took care of it,” Charlie said, reaching for me before dropping her hand. “I waded in and just started throwing punches. For a couple minutes, it was a mess, but I think they didn’t hit me back because I’m a girl.” She looked at her feet. “I did my best, though. I got a couple good ones in, and they left.” She huffed out a small laugh. “I have a feeling one of them won’t be fathering children.”

  “Thank you,” I rasped out as Charlie looked past me, her eyes filling with tears.

  “Sorry,” she said to Kara.

  “Fuck you,” Kara hissed back. “Why can’t you ever mind your own fucking business?”

  “Sounds like it was a good thing she didn’t,” I said, turning back toward the woman I had been in love with since I was old enough to know what that meant.

  The implications of Charlie’s story were almost too much for me to wade through. The fact that Kara had been harassed in school, even though everyone had said she was being left alone, that my brother had left her for the wolves, knowing how life in a small town worked and how she’d be targeted, the way Kara had changed from the bubbly, outgoing girl she’d been to the woman who’d never even been in a bar until earlier that night, and when confronted with those assholes from school had gone white as a ghost—all of it beat at me like a sledgehammer. For the first time in my life, I was at a complete loss at what to do. Where did I go first? Back to the bar? Down to my apartment, hoping my brother would be there? Did I walk back to Kara and make her tell me everything?

  By the looks of her, she wasn’t about to tell me a goddamn thing.

  “That’s not all of it, is it?” I asked, not moving from my spot in Charlie’s doorway.

  Kara refused to reply. She turned on her heel and walked out of sight.

  Charlie’s door closed quietly behind me as I followed Kara. I found her in the kitchen, cleaning the already pristine countertop.

  “You gonna answer me?” I asked.

  “Just let it go,” she replied angrily, swiping at her cheeks as she turned to face me. At any other time, the tears in her eyes would’ve swayed me. I would’ve done anything to stop them. This time, though, I knew the answers she wasn’t giving were important.

  “That a no?” I asked.

  “It’s none of your fucking business, either,” Kara shot back. “I had a life after you were locked up, okay? Everyone did. Sorry that’s hard for you to take.”

  My head jerked back in surprise.

  “I’ll let you get back to it then,” I said.

  I turned and walked away from her, even though it killed me. She was hiding shit and I wasn’t about to get blindsided with it later. I was an open book for her and I deserved the same in return.

  “Where are you going?” Kara called, following me.

  “None of your fuckin’ business,” I replied tiredly, throwing her words back at her.

  I let myself out of the apartment and stood outside the door, unsure about where I should go. Eventually, I just walked back to my own place. Driving somewhere and taking the chance of being pulled over again for some bullshit reason didn’t hold a lot of appeal.

  The apartment was quiet when I got there and at first, I didn’t think Curtis was home.

  “Thought you’d be stayin’ at Kara’s,” he said, stepping out of his bedroom into the dark hallway.

  It was the wrong thing to say.

  The events of the night had amped me up so high that I wasn’t even sure I could speak to him. For my entire life, I’d looked at him and seen myself. My mirror image. But when I looked at him now, all I saw was a damn stranger.

  “We’re done,” I ground out, forcing myself to stay put, when all I wanted to do was finish what I’d started outside Callie and Grease’s.

  “The fuck is your problem?” Curtis snapped. “You act like I fuckin’ killed your dog or somethin’.”

  “I asked you to do one fuckin’ thing,” I roared.

  “She was fine,” Curtis yelled back. “Sorry if I didn’t want to hold your girlfriend’s hand for four years while you were locked up.”

  “All you had to do was watch her back, Curt,” I replied. “What? Were you too busy chasin’ tail? You couldn’t watch out for her because you were too busy gettin’ your dick wet?”

  “I did watch out for her,” he shot back.

  “The fuck you did.”

  “I did,” he said, taking a couple steps forward. “I made it known that no one was allowed to fuck with her.”

  “Well, apparently nobody gave a flyin’ fuck what you made known.”

  “What are you talking about?” Curt asked. “I thought you were pissed because I didn’t hang out with her after you were gone. What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “I’m talkin’ about a group of jocks harrassin’ her at school and God knows what else—”

  “I never heard anythin’ about that,” he replied, throwing his hands up in the air. “If I had, I woulda done somethin’.”

  “Sure you would’ve,” I spat.

  “I didn’t want to be around her,” Curtis said, dropping his arms. “But I still watched out for her.”

  “Why the fuck wouldn’t you want to be around her?” I asked. “We’ve been best friends our entire lives.”

  Curtis didn’t respond, he just stood there staring at me, his jaw clenched. The longer he stayed quiet, the clearer the picture became.

  “You have a thing for Kara?” I asked in disbelief. “Bullshit.”

  “Had,” Curtis ground out. “Always did.”

  “You never said a fuckin’ word,” I replied, still confused as fuck.

  “Course I didn’t,” he replied with a laugh. “You fuckin’ loved her, man. I just wanted to see her naked.”

  I took an involuntary step forward.

  “Not sayin’ I do now—I don’t,” he said, lifting a hand to stop me. “I think it probably had somethin’ to do with the way she wanted me.”

  He wasn’t doing himself any favors.

  “This is comin’ out wrong,” he said in frustration. “It was nice knowin’ I had her waitin’ in the wings, ya know? So when she wasn’t—” Curt shrugged. “It was weird. I got confused for a bit.”

  “Confused,” I said flatly.

  “Yeah,” he snapped. “Confused. Suddenly, you two are sneakin’ off and she’s not lookin’ at me anymore. She’s lookin’ at you.”

  “You sayin’ you were jealous?”

  “I’m sayin’ that I was a fuckin’ teenager, man,” he replied. “And part of me was wonderin’ if I’d done what you’d done, if she’d still be lookin’ at me like I was the best thing since sliced bread.”